Gay conversion therapy

Isaac Marks co-authored this clinical trial of CBT for CFS.

Michael Gelder's obituary acknowledged his role in developing CBT for CFS. The Oxford criteria paper acknowledges financial support from Michael Gelder.

Both are authors of a paper on electric aversion therapy for "sexual deviants".

PS:

Hans Eysenck is another name that pops up when one searches for gay conversion therapy. James Coyne wrote a blog post titled Hans Eysenck’s contribution to cognitive behavioral therapy for physical health problems: fraudulent data

Saying that the gay conversion therapy proponents moved to CBT for CFS would be a bit of a stretch but CBT for CFS seems to have grown in the same milieu.

 

Why would anyone want treatment for being a sexual deviant unless it was to enhance it?

 

This paper appears to discuss 'fetishism', transvestitism, and BDSM (why are those interested in ME conversion invariably also interested in BDSM? A question for another day.) Hideous, but not about sexual orientation, it would appear.

[Edit: worse, but something tells me that since this paper was published in 1970, it would be received with a thoughtful shake of the head and a 'tut-tut, old boy; why, back in those days everyone dosed with Valium and electroshock!']

[Edit 2: found whole text of a 1968 study by same guy that DOES mention electroshock for homosexuality here.]

 

yes, the top one is the 1968 paper I found. Others @strategist mentioned.

For those who haven't read through it, I do not recommend. Way to get your HR up. I'm going through methodical SNP analysis now to settle.

Wish I could say I do not believe the reality that this is still being carried out all over the world. Unfortunately ME gives you a crash course in what empowered people will do to the powerless while convincing them it's all for their own good.

 

@James Morris-Lent, we forgot "Failure to recover from gayness is positively associated with membership of LGBTQ rights groups".

 

ME/CFS Re-Education Therapy? 'MUS' clinics and al can be called re-education centers. Factually accurate but also an obvious menacing euphemism.

These are hilarious! A few more:
'I will argue that homosexuality is simply a belief, the belief that one is biologically sexually attracted to members of the same sex'

"
Obstacles to recovery

'In practice, even if treatment is available, there may be obstacles to recovery. Over time, the patient's beliefs may become entrenched and be driven by anger and the need to explain continuing homosexuality... patient groups who champion the interests of individuals with functional sexual disorientation... are increasingly influential; they are extremely effective in lobbying politicians and have even been threatening towards individuals and organizations who question the validity and permanence of the ungodly deviance they champion. Again the gay lobby is the best example.'
"

"
Psychological factors

'Research in several functional sexual disorientation syndrome has found that a strong belief that one has a "biological sexual orientation" and a helpless and passive attitude to coping is associated with persistent homosexuality.'
"
...

All jokes aside, it's uncanny how seamlessly the quotes can be altered to swap 'CFS' and 'Homosexuality' and retain their fidelity to the premises of the 'BPS' crew and anti-homosexuality fundamentalists.

For disclaimer purposes, this does not all imply any particular comparison between homophobic bigots and BPS CFS researchers. The 'phenomena' of CFS and being gay have little inherent similarity. The point just being that these 'enlightened', 'virtuous', 'scientists' have architected very similar lines of reasoning for explaining/treating ME/CFS to that of homophobic bigots explaining/'treating' homosexuality. This is not inherently bad - the BPS people's ideas could have panned out. However, the carelessness and intransigence with which they have acted validates the rather unflattering comparison.

 

Here is an article from 2010 by a journalist who went undercover to investigate conversion therapy:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ld-of-gay-to-straight-conversion-1884947.html

And a follow-up by the same journalist:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstr...ersion-therapy?utm_term=.pbxxmOaD8#.iidrDxKEg

 

At the same time as Theresa May is saying that she is going to ban gay conversion therapy (which is not available, funded or supported as part of public health policy) we have NICE actually considering the LP process whilst they are already supporting CBT and GET as legitimate treatments to convert peoples "faulty beliefs".

Gay conversion therapy is nonsense, bunkem and hocus pocus, but then so is homeopathy reiki and faith healing for certain things it makes claims about etc. But its not banned.

Most religious groups make alsorts of claims and statements to children and vulnerable people and put fear into children for example of hell and damnation, and makes claims of x or y group being the chosen ones and all others being the opposite. Yet none of that is banned.

I think there's real contradictions in what we claim to have the freedom to believe and what the state claims to have powers to ban or promote.

 

I believe that people are not, and never have been, free to believe whatever they wish. There are many reasons for this, some imposed by the individuals themselves, some imposed externally, such as by lynch mobs, by laws (such as no matter what my beliefs the cabbage currently in my possession is believed, by someone else, to be theirs).

Who is to say what beliefs we are free to hold, I believe all that can be said is, that in order for societys to function, freedom of belief can never be allowed.

...and, my belief, based on my having met several local "Reiki Masters", is that Reiki is often a useful method for recently divorced unemployed heavy drinkers with no other obvious skills to generate an income stream, which will then be used to benefit the local and, probably, international economy - in much the same way as pubs are a useful, and efficient, way of turning water contaminated by the excrement of small biologicals into money.

 

I was just going to ask you if you wanted to meet up for a pint Woolie, but I wont bother now.

 

Now THIS is a special taste in sexuality...plague others with electrical shocks...ah, wait, not so special today...it's sadism.

Although in my world, I wouldn't call sexual sadism "deviant" (as long as both sides agree), but I would call sadists so.

I am absolutely incredelous what exists TODAY. Exorcism, even online, conversion therapy, studies about electro shocks for "sexual deviants" (ok, from the 70s, but still)...this really are the Middle Ages, I am not dreaming.

 

I'd be shocked if it hadn't been said.

OMG.

Denying a biological reality = denying a biological reality, I guess. But you're right -- this isn't really 'funny' in the traditional sense. We're revealing a glitch in our society, an all-purpose coding algorithm to discredit and dismiss undesirables.

 

Just read these. The author must have a new article coming out soon, or so I hope.

 

Now I know where this "unhelpful thoughts" thing comes from...seems to be common language in psychiatry/psychology.

 

The thing is, whether a thought is helpful may not have anything to do with whether or not it's true. "I have a dreadful illness" is a crappy thought, but labeling that thought 'unhelpful' is to deny reality.

 

Well it's only an anecdote but I have a friend who suddenly discovered that he was mildly gay and was desperate to find a cure so underwent conversion therapy. It made him so serverely gay that he's now bedbound.

 

Being bedbound for teh gay has a, er... slightly different connotation...

I was going to attach a gif but everything I saw just made it worse...

 

Well it was either that or "bedridden".

 

Generally I've tended to think that it would be salutary if people would think about things in more complicated and nuanced ways. This and other things have persuaded me that actually the opposite is (also) true.

Take homosexuality. It is homophobes who concoct complicated and nuanced explanations for and arguments against being gay - and project layers of shrouded complexity upon a nebulous 'gay agenda'. This is nuts. Being gay is just being gay and it ought to be that simple. A lot of progress has been made in the U.S. (I don't know anything about elsewhere) because rights campaigners have succeeded in deleting irrational prejudices and bad ideas (I like your algorithm analogy here) from an encouragingly large amount of people. At least that's how I see it.

For ME/CFS, we have the psychobabblers concocting an eerily similar framework. But if you take your Freud-goggles off, it's a garden variety terrible illness (I think I'm lifting that phrase from another member here) that nobody understands yet. Unfortunately patients and supporters are having to work to delete the bad algorithm and get society to just look at face value so we can write salutary algorithms!

Obviously the difference is that ME/CFS is actually inherently really bad, so we do desperately need to build a complicated and nuanced understanding of it. But this starts from a sober face-value appraisal of reality.

What is the bad algorithm? Is it Freud? There seem to be a lot of people running around thinking that with their psychoanalytical ideas they can see the matrix and stop the bullets - but they're actually the ones creating layers of mis-reality that others have to work hard to strip back.